Fedora Legacy end-of-life announcements
| From: | Jesse Keating <jkeating-AT-j2solutions.net> | |
| To: | fedora-legacy-announce-AT-redhat.com | |
| Subject: | Announcing End of Life times (Fedora Core 1, 2, Red Hat Linux 7.3, 9) | |
| Date: | Sat, 22 Jul 2006 13:44:54 -0400 | |
| Cc: | fedora-legacy-list-AT-redhat.com |
With Fedora Core 6 Test 2 set to be released July 26th, it is time we announce the End of Life of our various Legacy supported releases. After much discussion on fedora-legacy-list and the #fedora-legacy IRC channel on the freenode network, we have decided to end of life the following releases when FC6 Test2 is released: Fedora Core 1 Fedora Core 2 This will leave us with supporting just releases 3 and 4 of Fedora Core. As to our Red Hat Linux releases (7.3 and 9) the following has been decided: New issues (bugs) will be accepted until October 1st of this year. No new bugs will be accepted after that mark. All existing bugs will be resolved to the best of our ability by December 31st of this year. What hasn't been completed by then will not be completed by the Fedora Legacy project. This will be the end of Fedora Legacy's support of the Red Hat Linux line of distributions. We will continue focusing our efforts on the Fedora Core line, and improving our integration with the Fedora project in whole. Please watch for more announcements regarding our integration with the Fedora project, and for schedule information should it change (Fedora Core release schedules can and do slip from time to time) Please direct any questions to the fedora-legacy-list@redhat.com email list. -- Jesse Keating RHCE (geek.j2solutions.net) Fedora Legacy Team (www.fedoralegacy.org) GPG Public Key (geek.j2solutions.net/jkeating.j2solutions.pub) -- fedora-legacy-list mailing list fedora-legacy-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-legacy-list
Posted Jul 24, 2006 18:25 UTC (Mon)
by jimmybgood (guest, #26142)
[Link] (15 responses)
Well, let's review the history of Fedora Core 2. It was released on May 18, 2004. Support was ended near the end of March, 2005 for an official run of only 10 and a half months. The last update at the Fedora Legacy project was June 6, 2006 for a total lifetime including barely over a year of security only updates of two years and nineteen days.
All support is scheduled to be cancelled July 26, 2006, three _working_ days after the end of life announcement on July 22. But that date has no meaning that I can see, since no updates have been released since, June 6, despite known security vulnerabilities.
Imagine the most irresponsible, cut-throat commercial operating system. Do you think even they would dare tell its users something like, "Oh we haven't bothered with any security updates in the past couple months, so we're just going to drop support altogether"?
Perhaps Will Woods is correct in saying that Fedora is not a test bed for Redhat. But I certainly can't take it seriously as anything other than demonstration project to fool around with. Where I work, we're steadily replacing all these "toy" operating systems with systems that get support.
Posted Jul 24, 2006 18:55 UTC (Mon)
by smoogen (subscriber, #97)
[Link] (1 responses)
2) You are free to get a refund for what you paid for Fedora Core 2. However, looking over our records, you are behind in payments. You also have not signed our SLA paperwork so we are working under standard contractual times of delivery of product.
3) If you looked over previous announcements you will notice that the Fedora Legacy project has promised security support for 2 Fedora releases. The end-of-life discussion for FC1 and FC2 has been going on for over a year, and has been said several times for occuring at the 2nd test release of FC6 (e.g. when FC4 would move to legacy.)
Stephen Smoogen
Posted Jul 25, 2006 6:36 UTC (Tue)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link]
:-)
> However, looking over our records, you are behind in payments.
:-))
Posted Jul 24, 2006 19:08 UTC (Mon)
by dang (guest, #310)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jul 27, 2006 18:52 UTC (Thu)
by tseaver (guest, #1544)
[Link]
I don't think so. First, upgrading via yum is *not* a supported mechanism; even though it is possible, it is too risky to attempt remotely.
It was particularly painful for the earliest FC releases (the ones now being
Posted Jul 24, 2006 20:21 UTC (Mon)
by penguin (guest, #36771)
[Link] (5 responses)
Fedora is great for people who like to have the latest and greatest.
Posted Jul 24, 2006 20:54 UTC (Mon)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link] (4 responses)
it's a troll posting with some real truth behind it. unfortunantly it's a troll that generates a predictable, unthinking set of responses from fedora advocates (and there is another set of responses that are generated if the troll emphisises the bleeding-edge nature of fedora without mentioning the support issue, those responses claim that fedora isn't bleeding edge)
Posted Jul 24, 2006 22:11 UTC (Mon)
by otaylor (subscriber, #4190)
[Link] (2 responses)
While this may be true of the computing industry as a whole, it's not true, I think, of most LWN users. I'd guess that that most of us have some systems we are responsible for that we need long update cycles for, and also some systems we want to have the latest software on and that we don't mind upgrading every year or so.
It's very hard to cater to both markets with a single distribution; most basically, because if you release every 6 months and then support each release for 7 years... well you can do the math.
Posted Jul 24, 2006 23:50 UTC (Mon)
by ronaldcole (guest, #1462)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jul 27, 2006 15:10 UTC (Thu)
by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458)
[Link]
From what I see, this is a (packaging?) bug in PVM, something that isn't exactly what everybody is running. Hardly a reason for such a harsh complaint...
Posted Jul 25, 2006 11:36 UTC (Tue)
by scottt (guest, #5028)
[Link]
Redhat employs a lot of the core developers in the gcc linux kernel, glibc, and gnome projects so a lot of the "original development" actually happens on fedora running machines. That should certainly count as "serious" if not "normal" use.
One year may be too short a support life cycle for a lot of servers but the fedora project has always been clear about their product life cycles:
Posted Jul 25, 2006 12:25 UTC (Tue)
by Junior_Samples (guest, #26737)
[Link] (4 responses)
You nailed it, jimmybgood. No one in their right mind would recommend Fedora for serious business use. If your main business is something other than fiddling with and configuring operating systems, Fedora can become a terrible time sink. Just when you have a Fedora system nailed down, configured, and secure, you know it will be soon obsolete. Although the Fedora crowd is loath to admit it, Fedora has "hobbyist aficionado software" written all over it.
And the idea that Fedora upgrades are painless, depends on your threshold for pain. I've never seen a Fedora version change without issues. Someone looking for a stable, professional, and Redhat flavored free OS for a real business environment better look at CentOS instead.
Posted Jul 25, 2006 12:58 UTC (Tue)
by warmcat1 (guest, #31975)
[Link]
Just a data point for you... I have a hosted server that was delivered with FC1 (it was that or Windows). I have yum updated it through FC2, FC3 and FC4 (yes that includes the 2.4 FC1 --> 2.6 FC2 changeover) via ssh without problems. Now admittedly this does not have much of X on it because it is a headless server box. But still I was very pleased with it being remotely updatable like that and it certainly does remove the pain in my experience.
Posted Jul 25, 2006 13:02 UTC (Tue)
by skvidal (guest, #3094)
[Link] (2 responses)
No, We're not loath to admit it. It's on the main page of the website. A distribution for the hobbyist/expert segment of the user population.
-sv
Posted Jul 25, 2006 13:15 UTC (Tue)
by markhb (guest, #1003)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jul 25, 2006 18:30 UTC (Tue)
by skvidal (guest, #3094)
[Link]
I swear! The fedora.redhat.com page used to say something about 'home user/expert' or some such thing. It's been a long time since I went to that page so I don't know when it got changed..
sorry, But We're not loath to admit it!! :)
-sv
Wasn't it just a few days ago, that Will Woods, the new test lead for the Fedora Project, was quoted as saying, "There's always someone who will comment that Fedora is just Red Hat's beta test for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). It's not true, and I want no one to have cause to say that ever again"?Fedora Legacy end-of-life announcements
1) Fedora Legacy is a volunteer project. Other than Jesse, no-one is paid by Red Hat, but by the happiness we get from messages like this about how much we are loved. While Jesse is paid by Red Hat, this was a project that he started way before he was hired by Red Hat.Fedora Legacy end-of-life announcements
> You are free to get a refund for what you paid for Fedora Core 2.Fedora Legacy end-of-life announcements
One might also add that (a) it is pretty damn painless to upgrade between FC releases and (b) it has always been amply clear that for one's production server environment an Enterprise distro is the preferred way to go.Fedora Legacy end-of-life announcements
> (a) it is pretty damn painless to upgrade between FC releasesFedora Legacy end-of-life announcements
EOL'ed).
What are you complaining about? Fedora is supposed to cater the people who want to be on the bleeding edge. As such its in its nature to not have long release cycles. There are other distributions for those who dont want to upgrade their systems often, like Ubuntu LTS, Debian Stable or Gentoo.Fedora Legacy end-of-life announcements
he wasn't claiming tha Fedora isn't a bleeding edge distro, he was pointing out the contridiction between teh claims that it's not a betatest for RHE (and therefor it's suitable for normal use) and the fact that it is bleeding edge and has very short support cycles (which would make it unsuitable for normal use)Fedora Legacy end-of-life announcements
The assumption you are making is that the only form of normal use is installing on a system you want to maintain stable for over two years.Fedora Legacy end-of-life announcements
Oh, I don't know that that's true. For quite a long while now, you've been unable to patch yourself to the next Red Hat major version release. And with Red Hat recently screwing up many, many systems with Bugzilla bug #191841 in RHEL 3 Update 8, my loyalties may be changing to the Debian camp: Ubuntu 6.06 LTS being available and all. And the price is right! As long as I can continue to patch my systems up to the next major release, I'll be a happier camper.Fedora Legacy end-of-life announcements
Fedora Legacy end-of-life announcements
And with Red Hat recently screwing up many, many systems with Bugzilla bug #191841 in RHEL 3 Update 8...
In fairness, I think you should take into account that during its supported life time a fedora release gets security patches very quickly as can be seen from the LWN security page. Many programmers actually enjoy upgrading their workstations once or twice a year and getting all the latest libraries and development tools along with a good desktop to work on.Fedora Legacy end-of-life announcements
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/LifeCycle
Fedora Legacy end-of-life announcements
> And the idea that Fedora upgrades are painless, Fedora Legacy end-of-life announcements
> depends on your threshold for pain. I've never
> seen a Fedora version change without issues.
Quote:Fedora Legacy end-of-life announcements
Although the Fedora crowd is loath to admit it, Fedora has "hobbyist aficionado software" written all over it.
End Quote.
Fedora Legacy end-of-life announcements
No, We're not loath to admit it. It's on the main page of the website. A distribution for the hobbyist/expert segment of the user population.
I'm not trolling (I'm a happy FC5 user on a home desktop machine), but where, exactly, does it say that? I can't find "hobby" (or any similar sentiment) on the homepage of either fedoraproject.org or fedora.redhat.com.
hmm Well it _used_ to say it. :)Fedora Legacy end-of-life announcements